Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 593 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), Joe’s picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 7% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is pretty good. It would not be an exceptional annual ROI for an investor. But it’s not too shabby when coming between four hours and seven months after making the picks.
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Only one pick today.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, Team Rankings, and ESPN is/are often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
SMU @ Houston
Our model’s preview of college football’s week nine will come out tomorrow. However, one of the games it would mention, were it coming out in time, is happening tonight. SMU is 7-0, and while it’s a long shot (0.1%) to make the College Football Playoff, it’s one of the leaders in the race for the Group of Five’s spot in a New Year’s Six bowl.
The polls love the Mustangs. The AP has them 16th in the country. The Coaches Poll has them 17th. The aggregate ratings our model uses are a bit more skeptical.
Of course, the polls and the ratings have different goals. The polls are trying to balance two things: how good teams are, and how good teams’ résumés are. The ratings are simply trying to measure how good teams are. SMU has a good résumé. They’re a good team. But they’re probably not the 16th or 17th-best in the country. This week, the ratings we use have them at 37th.
Now, there’s an argument to be made that the ratings don’t adequately evaluate SMU. That argument relies on the premise that the ratings haven’t yet caught up to the Mustangs. But while that may have been true for the season’s first few weeks, it’s not safe to assume it’s still true. Here’s where SMU has been ranked in the FBS by our ratings entering each week of the season:
Week 1: 90th
Week 2: 82nd
Week 3: 67th
Week 4: 66th
Week 5: 48th
Week 6: 38th
Week 7: 40th
Week 8: 39th
Week 9: 37th
Not a lot’s changed these last four weeks. SMU has plateaued. And while they’re still liable to move, that movement could go in either direction.
One would think the opposite argument to this one could be made regarding Houston. Houston entered the year having made a bowl game in six straight seasons, having won the 2015 Peach Bowl, and having beaten two teams in 2016 that were ranked third in the country at the time (by the AP Poll). The reputation was one of competence, and an 18-point loss to Oklahoma to open the year didn’t give any appearance of incompetence. Neither did a seven-point loss to Washington State. But after the next week (Week 4), in which Houston lost to Tulane by seven on the road, multiple key contributors elected to redshirt. A few weeks later (we’re entering Week 7 now in the timeline), a graduate transfer who had recently left the program accused Head Coach Dana Holgorsen of asking the players to redshirt, effectively giving up on this season while keeping the cupboard stocked for next year. Houston then went and lost to Cincinnati at home, which isn’t too surprising, but only managed to beat UConn by a touchdown in the following week, which was certainly concerning.
The narrative, then, seems to be that Houston is dropping. But while they’ve certainly dropped these past two weeks, they actually aren’t far right now from where they entered the year.
Week 1: 71st
Week 2: 70th
Week 3: 76th
Week 4: 72nd
Week 5: 76th
Week 6: 64th
Week 7: 62nd
Week 8: 68th
Week 9: 74th
I don’t know what’s going on inside Houston’s locker room. I don’t know what magic SMU has working for them. But the ratings we use suggest this spread should be around seven points. It’s at 14 instead. That’s a big gap, implying Houston should actually be rated equivalently to Montana or Georgia State (Georgia State is ranked 99th by the ratings we use). It’s hard not to take a shot at the Cougars here.
Pick: Houston +14 (-110). Low confidence.
